Keeping an Eye on Next Thursday

Western NC Snow: The Winter Weather Advisory effective until Sunday morning will be a cause for concern on side roads and back roads early Sunday. Once the sun comes back tomorrow morning, areas not in the shade will see the snow melt. Eventually those shady places will also melt.

Sunday: Sun will come back out tomorrow and stay out all day along with a blue sky. After a cold start in the 20s, afternoon temperatures will only reach the 40s. Western NC highs will stay in the upper 30s in the high elevations while valley towns will reach the low 40s.

New Year's Eve - Monday: Expect slightly warmer temperatures, but we will still stay cool under more sunshine than clouds most of the day. Highs will reach the low 50s in Upstate towns with 40s in Western NC by afternoon. Clouds will increase by afternoon and evening.

New Year's Day: Scattered rain will come down for the first day of 2013 as a new system cruises into our region. While the rain falls, we will deal with cool temperatures in the 40s area-wide.

Thursday - Freezing Rain Potential: Another system and interesting set of circumstances could show up (for Upstate SC and portions of NE Georgia) by next Thursday the 3rd. There could also be no storm at all (if the northern flow of energy ends up dominant and squashes the subtropical energy coming from Mexico and Texas). The reason for this topic is that it helps to at least throw the prospect/potential of a high-impact system on the table so that nobody is surprised within 3-4 days.

The setup (if things don't trend dry)... A high pressure area centered somewhere in the northeast would be responsible for funneling cold air in a south-bound direction from Virginia to North Carolina and into South Carolina. Depending on the positioning and strength of that high pressure system, we may or may not see a sub-freezing, shallow layer of arctic air at the surface. Meanwhile, the southern system (mentioned above) would be moving slowly into the lower Mississippi Valley and will pull warm, moist air over the top of this shallow, cold air mass.

**edit: Saturday overnight and Sunday trend is the northern stream, Canadian energy overwhelming the sub-tropical flow and leading to dry at the surface (no storm).